The archaeological discovery of presumably aborted fetuses in outhouses in New York along with pill bottles and historical records have led researchers to conclude that many 19th century American women had family-planning concerns similar to those of 21st century women.

Writing in this month's Historical Archaeology journal, archaeologist Andrea Zlotucha Kozub of the Public Archaeology Facility at Binghamton University details her discovery of fetal remains and associated artifacts in two upstate New York domestic outhouses. Although potential aborted fetuses have been previously found in an outhouse associated with a 19th century brothel in Manhattan, Zlotucha Kozub's study is the first to find this sort of evidence from middle-class houses.

"Ladies of the night may have had the recurring need for abortion,"Zlotucha Kozub writes, "but historical documents show that housewives, particularly those from the White, Protestant middle class, regularly used abortion as a form of contraception." However, she notes that defining abortion in the 19th century is made difficult by the fact that the word was used to describe both naturally occurring and induced miscarriages.

In the 19th century, the growing fetus was not recognized as an entity separate from its mother's body until she felt 'quickening' or the movement of the baby inside her, which tends to occur anytime between 16-25 weeks' gestation. Most women of the time believed that "a pregnancy did not exist until there was a quickening, and a child did not exist until it was born alive," Zlotucha Kozub explains. So inducing an abortion before quickening was a "don't ask, don't tell" situation, but abortions occurring after quickening were considered a criminal act by the doctor or other practitioner who caused the abortion.

In the 1840s, abortion was commercialized and rates of the practice soared, but at the same time a new movement arose ostensibly concerned with the welfare of embryos and fetuses. While some doctors performed abortions, others sought to apply their Hippocratic Oath to the unborn fetuses and worked to outlaw abortion completely. One particular physician, Dr. Horatio Storer, started an anti-abortion crusade in 1857, dismissing the dangers of childbirth and health complications of pregnancy and introducing propaganda that laid out complications and side effects of abortion that were speculative and non-medical. Adding to this movement, Pope Pius IX's 1869 decree that fetal ensoulment occurs at conception rather than at quickening meant that abortion became an offense for which a woman could be excommunicated from the Catholic church.

"Despite these prohibitions," Zlotucha Kozub explains, "women continued to have abortions. The exact rates of induced abortion were estimated to be very high, perhaps as many as one in five pregnancies." Part of this was likely women's attitude towards a pregnancy that had not yet led to quickening. For some, the event of miscarriage was a welcome relief from unwanted pregnancy, historical records suggest, and "these women did not perceive their embryos and pre-quickened fetuses as 'babies' to be mourned." Doctors who sought to outlaw abortion in the mid-19th century therefore turned to "an emotional war of words designed to shame these women into bearing children," Zlotucha Kozub says. "By mid-century, it was clear that the majority of abortion seekers were married women engaged in family planning." Until Zlotucha Kozub's new analysis, however, no archaeological evidence of abortion had been found in a domestic context in New York before.

A house on Canal Street in Binghamton, New York, was the site of archaeological investigation by the Public Archaeology Facility in the 2010s. Historical records identify the family, which Zlotucha Kozub has chosen to pseudonymize as the Mortons to preserve the privacy of potential descendants in the area. Through intensive documentary research, Zlotucha Kozub found that Mrs. Morton bore three children between 1871 and 1875. The Mortons' outhouse contained a wealth of information about their daily lives, including a lot of trash related to the children and childrearing. However, the outhouse also yielded 18 bones from a 30- to 32-week-old fetus.

Discovery of fetal bones is not uncommon on archaeological sites, as miscarriages were at least as frequent in antiquity as they are today. Zlotucha Kozub, however, interprets the bones as a potential aborted fetus because of a pharmaceutical bottle discovered in the trash pit that had contained "Clarke's Female Pills." This mail-order drug contained savin, an herb that was a known abortifacient, and "may be considered circumstantial evidence for the death of this particular fetus."

Whether the fetus was from Mrs. Morton or from one of the family's two live-in servants is unknown, but Zlotucha Kozub thinks that "the combined evidence of the discarded nursing bottles and Mrs. Morton's abrupt cessation of childbearing both point to family planning, for which abortion would have been both consistent and historically valid." The fetal remains in the outhouse context seem to be "an act of concealment, underscoring the criminal aspect of the abortion," since the fetus "was expelled well after quickening." Had the fetus been miscarried, the Mortons would likely have buried it rather than disposing of its body in the family outhouse.

The second potential abortion that Zlotucha Kozub found was from an archaeological site in Niagara Falls. 17 bones from a fetus approximately 30 weeks' gestation were found in an outhouse associated with a rental house that was occupied in the 1850s. Census records suggest that Mr. Chester, a lawyer, lived there around that time with his wife and three daughters (one teen, two preteen) and a female teenage servant. Unlike the Binghamton case, the Niagara Falls outhouse does not include enough artifacts or context to suggest whether the fetus had belonged to Mrs. Chester, the eldest daughter, or the servant. Additionally, because this was a rental property, it is equally possible that some other tenant than the Chester family was responsible.

"The Binghamton and Niagara Falls sites," Zlotucha Kozub writes, "share a greater historical context demonstrating middle-class use of abortion for family planning in the 19th century. Concealment in the outhouse is suggestive of maternal indifference and/or a consciousness of criminal activity, both of which are consistent with abortion." Historical records from the period rarely note what happened to stillborn or aborted fetuses, but occasional police and coroners' records mention the discovery of 'infanticide victims' in outhouses.

"Zlotucha Kozub's research contributes to a growing understanding of women's agency in their family lives in the 19th century," bioarchaeologist Meredith Berman Ellis of Florida Atlantic University tells me. "We get from her study a picture of the intersection of private choices and public pressures, of the reality of living as a woman and potential mother in the new middling class in the 19th century in upstate New York."

Evidence of abortion from archaeological sites in the United States is still scanty, in spite of the historical suggestion that numerous pregnancies were terminated in this way. Because of the small size of fetal bones, they are often missed during excavation, and they can easily be mistaken for domesticated animal remains, as both of the cases in Zlotucha Kozub's analysis initially were.

"The discovery of a fetus in an outhouse allows us to examine the bookends of life - birth and death - in a new way, as this research adds an unexpected dimension to our understanding of Victorian mothers," Zlotucha Kozub tells me. "While I'm obviously not the first historian to discuss 19th century abortion and family planning, these discoveries are physical evidence of a practice that might seem incompatible with our sentimental views of Victorian motherhood."

In the end, Zlotucha Kozub notes, her analysis shows that "Mrs. Morton and the unknown woman in Niagara Falls were women who had a difficult choice to make and who made it at the most difficult hour."

As a bioarchaeologist, I routinely pore over the skeletons of ancient populations so that I can learn about their health, diet, and lifestyles. (PhD anthropology, MA classical archaeology)